World of Reviews: Games, Movies, And More!!

Directed and Written by: Anurag Kashyap, 2009

The euphoria over Anurag Kashyap is rising, even though he has shut himself off from the world in his Mumbai home. And not just for any reason. The man who made groundbreaking movies like No Smoking and Dev D is back again with his former project shelved in 2003 – Gulaal.

Gulaal is ever so slightly different from Kashyap’s genre in Bollywood. It is, in its basics, a scaled down version of a piece of the intense politics in India – seen through the eyes of the “budding” new generation. An incredibly and beautifully complicated story where multiple threads entwine themselves in the lust for power – this movie has it all for successful portrayal of Indian politics – the futility, the irony and the passion, all are present.

The movie begins with the uninitiated puzzlement in Dilip Kumar Singh’s eyes as he enters his rented room in the deserts of Rajpur, a fictional town of Rajasthan. The 28-year old postgraduate is there to study law. Little does he know that there can be no law in the city. Small and insignificant it may be, yet even Rajpur is not free from the flutters and storms of politics. In search of love and a career, Dilip Singh enters far too deep into the growing revolution for a new nation-state of Rajputana to ever come out alive.

Gulaal moves very fast – the scenes almost jump on top of each other, encompassing the details of months in 2 and half hours. And all throughout the film, the fear unleashed by the local political leaders is as well portrayed as could ever be – courtesy Piyush Mishra’s music.

The highlights of the film are the characters and the dialogues. The latter are very well thought out – while on the one hand, they are colloquial, they are also effectively poetic and strike deep.

Kashyap’s characters are the best part of the movie, the one major thing that separates him from most of the contemporary directors – he has made this entire film only based on the character interactions. And it is the characters that make this film so turbulently captivating that it is bound to draw you back again and again to this movie. All the characters have their role to play and are very real and – equal. Even the women in traditionally downtrodden roles – the raped/ ragged young teacher, the cheated wife, and the mistress – everyone somehow retains their human dignities. Duki Bana’s wife gets barely a total of one or two minutes of screen space – yet her last dialogue with Bana make her an unforgettable character. Mahie Gill of Dev D fame electrifies with the few minutes of her guest role; when Abhimanyu Singh carelessly says that a beating is all she’s worth, you can’t help agree.

There is much to be learnt from the film in retrospect. Prithvi Bana is a character present only to mark the vanity of Duki Bana’s confused calls for “Kranti”, a character just begging to relapse into useless and distracting comic relief. Yet he shines as an important member of the story. Only Prithvi Bana, Duki Bana’s wife and Anuja survive the onslaught of mindless politics – the only people, if you’ll note, who could tolerate the world as it is and still dream of a future brighter than that of Duki Bana.

In the end, the effect is rather angsty, frustrated and tumultuous – the very embodiment of dirty politics in play at every level of Indian life. Gulaal lives up to its name in a very abstract way – again Anurag Kashyap’s trademark. It is not the red powder used farcically in the movie which the name implies, but rather the unchecked flow of red blood which must accompany the characters’ fruitless struggle for power. It implies the tears that must flow to wash away the mask of Gulaal.

If you’re anything into Bollywood’s new matured avatar, not mentioning Anurag Kashyap’s fan, this movie is a must watch.

Rating: out of 5

Developed by Big Finish Games

Help a lost young lady remember her past in Three Cards to Midnight, an original hidden object game featuring a unique new way to play. Each rich location in this challenging game is full of items hidden in plain sight. Use your best deduction skills to determine which items to find by matching a series of keywords with the items in the room. Complete each chapter to reveal a little bit of our heroine’s lost memory and unravel the truth about her identity. More than the average hidden object game, Three Cards to Midnight also contains original puzzles to solve along the way. Get a sneak peek at this engrossing game with the free trial version, or get the full version and follow our heroine through eight riveting chapters of mysterious exploration. Turn over the Tarot Cards and discover the rich and compelling hidden object fun in Three Cards to Midnight today.

- Big Fish Games

Story: You’re in a dark room. And you can’t remember anything. You’ve just shuffled the pack of cards in your hands, but you can’t recollect doing it. What happened to your memories? What is lost among your store of memoirs? Follow the instructions of the stranger to read your past from your three chosen Tarot cards!

Gameplay: Frankly, Three Cards to Midnight has one of the most innovative premises in recent times. You are given from one upto four words, like “Note”, “House”, or “School”, and a room. Your task is to find all the prefixes and suffixes in the room which can be combined with the given word to form words. Like, for example, you can click on a key on the room to form the word “Key + Note = Keynote.” A completely new idea, but it is surprisingly easier than it sounds.

The plot unravels nicely throughout the game. The game provides you with three modes – Easy, Normal and Gamer. Trust me, the normal mode is a complete misnomer! If you’re a casual gamer, go for the Easy Mode. The other two modes will have you hooked onto the computer for hours. Warning: The Normal Challenge and the Gamer Mode are both for severely interested or highly expert gamers.

There are 10 chapters in all. The puzzles at the end of each chapter are truly spellbinding in their complexity and innovation. Chances are, you’re bound to skip one or two of them if you’re an average gamer!

A disadvantage in this maddeningly puzzling and tough game is the lack of hints and misses. You are given a paltry 3 or 4 hints for each room with upto 4 words. Misses are the number of times you can guess the wrong object to combine with the given word. That also, alas, is limited to 10 or so. Every time you complete 100 points by finding objects, you get an extra hint – but you can’t ever carry it over to the other rooms. Serves plenty of the purpose to keep the game very difficult!

Depending on how well you’ve performed in each room, how many hints you’ve used and whether you’ve skipped the puzzle at the end or not, each Tarot card you choose is assigned a specific star rating. By the end of the game, you must choose your best two cards to beat the game. As a result, you’ll find you need to do some of the rooms over and over again to get the things right.

Ambience: The first cutscene that greets you is pretty impressive – it is 3D graphics, although with low scope, but well animated. The graphics go downhill from there. Seriously, the graphics are cracked due to too much zooming, and they lack the clarity and colour necessary for a decent Hidden Object game. Nowhere in the game did I find an Options menu, where I can change picture quality or the resolution, so I’m bound to take it that the picture quality’s that bad. That is a major drawback.

The music improves as the game progresses and you get more into the game. It nicely brings out the dark mysterious undertones of the plot and the heroine’s struggle to come to terms with her own history mired in occult magic and desperate plots of murder and betrayal.

Bottomline:

The novel idea for the game and the plot filled with suspense are the chief reasons for the average gamer to try out this game. It is a reasonable game, long, different flavoured and with an awesome cinematic narration. This game is a must play for all. For most, however, making their way through the game without a walkthrough would be an impossibility.

Rating:

Download the full free version from AdnanBoy!

All alight at the Lucky Junction!

Story: Hanna Harlow’s Heavenly Homes is holding a contest on interior designing! And you, as Lucky Junction’s budding interior decorator, have decided to try out your luck in Hanna Harlow’s program. Get into designing your neighbour’s rooms and collect the items you need from their Yard Sales! Complete interesting projects and vie for the crown of the top designer!

A fun story definitely, coupled with the silliest detective subplot I’ve seen in years!

Gameplay: New ideas are fast flowing into the Hidden Object genre so that now there are plenty of games beyond finding clues, escaping and going after your lost fortune. Decorating rooms – now that’s a real novelty! In fact, it is much more captivating than the hidden object part.

You, as the unnamed designer, are employed by the townspeople to refurbish their rooms. You gather up the required objects from Yard Sales from around the town of Lucky Junction (that’s the HOG part) and then use them to create innovative projects. However, most of the yard sale screens are too cluttered to help you make much out – there should’ve been more hints. Although nowhere is it said so, you can gather more hints by clicking any star shaped object you find. Remember that!

The activities involving the projects are really fun when you do them, yet they’re little more than cleaning and painting. It is probably the anticipation of what the complete product will look like is what feeds our interest. Such minigames at the end of each project might look easy to err on, but honestly, they’ve a huge margin of error, and it doesn’t seem to me that it is even possible to get anything beyond 100%.

From time to time, these painting or spraying jobs will give you the opportunity to shake your can or refill your brush. Most of the time, you wouldn’t need anything of the sort.

The game menu has several choices. You can play in the Career Mode, which is the story mode, either with or without a timer. After you’ve finished with the career mode, the Lucky Junction Tour Mode is opened up – that is the pure hidden object game with a time limit to boot. So the game retains its replayability perfectly!

Ambience: Yard Sale Hidden Treasures Lucky Junction has a host of funnily drawn characters with absolutely rib-tickling names – like an Egyptian lady is christened Faye Rowe (Pharaoh), and an Eskimo named – guess what? – S. Keymo! Other characters include Mother Goose, Father Time, Rick Hoffen, Trish Thrasher, Grizzly Jones, Nikki Darking, Robort Robot, R. Master and Charly Pullman.

Boldly colourful and coupled with zippy music, this game does surprisingly well as a soothing casual game.

Bottomline: Hardly a glitch or a point of irritation. The silly and the cute combine to end in a breezy game. If you’re a HOG fan, or will love an addicting HOG game, this game is a must play. Why don’t I give it full marks? It isn’t unforgettably good, and it is too frisky for my tastes.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Download the full free version from AdnanBoy!

Picture this: the ultimate Indian reality show, where the best young Indian will be chosen to shake hands with George Bush. Now imagine this: six contestants, two judges, 19 hours – caught in a hall of the American consulate. What could that lead to?

You can guess!

The President is Coming  is one of those new age movies that aren’t made so commonly in India, yet is gradually growing more and more acceptable to people. I don’t have any idea how this turned out to be a box office failure, for simply, this is one of the most hilarious movies I’ve seen ever.

This is a very well-scripted and well cinematographed satire on a complex India suffering from hallucinatory images of success and freedom, and employing all possible techniques to relentlessly climb the global ladder in a pro-American world. The characters are delightfully complex, yet hardly stereotypical; and it’s good to have at least one film that explores the variety of Indian youth without passing any judgment on them. A bossy kleptomaniac, a sexist social worker, a wannabe firangi, a spoilt rich scion and an assassin-in-waiting – where are there such an incredible diversity of characters in a film?

The dialogues are singularly well-written, witty and well-timed. But the film doesn’t rely on the dialogues alone – and for this, particular credit must go to the cinematographer. As the film is made as a pseudo-documentary, from time to time certain interviews are inserted – and all charmingly replete with the irony of modern India! Take special care to listen to all the absurdities of how to take care of a President – they’re sure to crack you up!

The film is filled with unknown faces (except Konkona Sen Sharma), but the cast does a very good job – especially the guys playing Ajay, Ramesh and Rohit (sorry, I don’t know you names!) Contrary to expectations, I’d say Konkona doesn’t take as much part in the humour of the storyline as she should have – maybe because she’s not intended as a funny character? Parts of her role definitely stand out – like when she says “Don’t touch my breasts” or when she explains the similarities between Americans and Bangalis. But I still can’t digest how she was disqualified – that’s one major flaw in the entire script. Also, her books could’ve been made more nonsensical. Then the relation between Sam and Maya – I know, it was only one day, but was it going anywhere near a lesbian relationship, at least on Sam’s front (we all know Maya is a determined swindler)? No idea.

The guy playing Md. Aslam was… stiff, quite so, most probably unintendedly. Now if he had just been a more versatile actor, the ulterior message of the film would have gone down better.

There are serious points in the film too; points when there are slight breaks from the breathless laughing. But they’re not out of place – in fact, they help in explaining the complexity of the characters. And they bring out the irony and comedy much better. I simply cracked up when in the end, I saw Samantha’s fate, or when Maya and Sam were fighting on the floor.

All in all, the President is Coming is a mature situational comedy, with a good, tight script. It is not for all, because much is to be read between the lines and you need to appreciate some dark humour and sex jokes from time to time. Is it much of an irony to say that this film is more American than any of the characters in it could ever be? One of the best films released in 2009.

Rating: